Have hot barbecue, will travel

Cindy Wheatley, owner of Boneheads BBQ restaurant, looks over the newly opened second location on Dutch Village Road in Halifax, Tuesday. (ADRIEN VECZAN / Staff)

SOME WOULD SAY there is a new barbecue joint on Dutch Village Road, but passionate meat eaters and fans would call it an art gallery of sorts.

An art gallery where the main attraction is eye-popping servings of traditional barbecue, that is.

Nearly three years to the day since Boneheads BBQ fired up the smoker at its flagship location on Barrington Street, the antithesis to the vegetarian restaurant has opened a second outlet, this time at 3625 Dutch Village Rd.

Buoyed by the success of its first three years, founder and owner Cindy Wheatley said she never really considered her pet project busting at the seams of its now-cramped 1,000-square-foot space downtown.

“We’ve definitely exceeded all of my expectations with the first restaurant,” Wheatley said Tuesday.

“After a while, it just became clear that we needed to expand. We needed more space, and we needed somewhere where we could experiment and try some different things in barbecue. We had that in our original plans, but with such a small location (on Barrington Street), we found we were just keeping up and we didn’t have the time or space to experiment.”

The new member to the Boneheads family is more than double the size of the original, offering more space for customers to dine in and enjoy what Wheatley describes as “true comfort food” such as a pulled pork sandwich with a side of mac and cheese, cornbread and coleslaw.

The additional space frees up a designated area for takeout orders to help speed up customer service and created the room Wheatley needed to import a massive smoker from Texas that can smoke up to 270 kilograms of meat at a time.

When looking for a second home, Wheatley said she was attracted to the Fairview area and the property next door to Mexico Lindo because of the up-and-coming nature of the neighbourhood and its gritty curb appeal.

“We’re not really a mall or a strip-mall type of place,” Wheatley said, laughing at the mention of the company’s blush-worthy marketing campaigns.

“It’s got a neighbourhood feel, and it’s a little hole in wall — that’s what good barbecue should be.”

Before launching Boneheads, Wheatley was general manager of Grinner’s Food Systems Ltd., the franchiser for the Greco Pizza and Capt. Sub chains.

Wheatley said her lifelong affinity for traditional barbecue has consumed her vacation time and much of her spare time, experimenting with smoking and barbecuing meats in her backyard for guests.

“I love everything about barbecue lifestyle and the food itself. I love travelling down south and the whole spirit of stopping in at roadside joints where the owner has a smoker out back. It’s perfect.

“People think that it’s fairly simple food, but you really have to use your brain and keep an eye on things. It really is all about the meat and putting out really good comfort food.”

Boneheads is open Sunday through Thursday from 11 a.m. until 8 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. until 9 p.m.